Mark 13:1–8
An editorial note: Conversations about this passage on Twitter have raised some additional points that I wanted to take into account in our conversation here. First, the antisemitic use of this passage by Christians historically must be recognized. The passage has been used to encourage the destruction of Jewish communities and religious sites. Christians have used it in even unintentionally antisemitic ways.
In light of that, I think that while in this post we tried to make it clear that Jesus is not condemning the temple or declaring its destruction to be because it’s bad, we should go further to avoid comparison between the temple and bad human institutions. While Jesus’ words do present an apocalyptic vision of a future of God beyond everything that is, that newness comes at a cost, and one we as Christians must be especially careful to respect. As I saw someone comment on Twitter, the temple is not our symbol as Christians, and perhaps not ours to appropriate for the sake of comparison.
Of particular importance to my thinking in ongoing conversation about this passage was the emphasis on the destruction of the Temple as religious trauma, and especially a religious trauma for Jews. In this context, the emphasis of the passage seems even further to be on God’s fidelity even in the face of the traumatic change that has just occurred. In this context, the coming newness of God is a promise about God’s character. As Wilson wrote, “There is injustice and hardship in this world but God is on the side of life.” The enduring fidelity and the promise of new life in God is not opposed to the temple but to the empire that destroyed it. Even in the face of trauma, God is on the side of life.
This passage is challenging for Christians to approach carefully. But a shared promise of God’s fidelity to us and to the cause of justice offers common ground and a basis for abolitionist futures. —Hannah
We often act as if what currently is has always been. We do so especially with buildings and bridges and institutions. “Do you see these great buildings?” Jesus says of the Temple complex, but it can be said of all our human institutions. Look how big it is! Look how much support it has! Look how many people support prison and incarceration! Look how many people assume prisons have always been around!
Not one stone will be left. Not one stone of the Prison Industrial Complex will remain. Even if it seems like that is the way things are, those stones aren’t as big as the ones on the Temple Mount! Jesus challenges our assumptions about the world and offers us encouragement about what we should assume and what we should seek to change in this world.
The Temple was the center of faith. The Temple housed the Holy of Holies, which is the location of the presence of God that can only be entered once a year by only one person. Jesus went to the Temple as a child and told his parents that he had gone to his father’s house. Jesus doesn’t speak about the stones of the temple in this way because it is bad or a bad institution — it is not! — but because God’s future is beyond what we know and what we take for granted. If even those stones of the holy Temple are overturned, what of the institutions who cause injustice in this world? They will certainly not last, so we should be encouraged about the new future God promises as we start taking them down brick by brick.
This is challenge enough from this difficult passage, but Jesus is not finished. He is with his disciples and he warns them about folks who will lead them astray. False prophets who claim faith but lead others to destruction. Claiming Jesus does not make something good or just. In fact, many of these false prophets surround us today and claim Jesus in order to continue unjust practices.
The kingdom of heaven is not a continuation of the status quo in perpetuity, but something radically new. There is injustice and hardship in this world but God is on the side of life. May we put our hope not in existing institutions but the Son of God who calls us when we are weary and heavy laden and gives us rest.
Rev. Wilson Pruitt is a Methodist pastor and translator in Spicewood, TX.